Tear Down This Wall...
Suppose that I had asked you, in the mid-1980's, what you thought it would take to bring down the Berlin Wall? What would you have said? I can imagine the answer. Perhaps another world war. Perhaps some kind of multilateral, long-term rapprochement between East and West Germany. At the very least, some kind of intervention costing many billions of dollars.
Certainly that's the kind of scenario that was envisioned by all of the world's so-called experts on Eastern Europe. When it came to predicting the life span of the Soviet Bloc, the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon did not think in terms of months or even years. They thought in terms of decades.
But what actually happened? In September 1989, a small group of dissidents in Leipzig, East Germany, held a protest rally and-for reasons no one quite understands-the local police did not sut it down. The next day, in the next town over, another group of dissidents held a protest of their own, and it was a little bigger this time beause they were emboldened by what happened in Leipzig.
The police in that town didn't stop the protesters because, after seeing what happened in Leipzig, they thought that maybe they weren't supposed to do anything. The day after that, there was still another protest in the next town over-a little bit bigger than the last, the police a little more passive-and on and on. All through East Germany, the protests got bigger and bigger and the police grew more and more passive until a million people gathered in the streets of East Berlin in October 1989 and tore down the Berlin Wall as the police sat and watched.
This was the biggest change any of us will probably ever see in our lifetime. It took a month, it cost nothing, and it started with a handful of people in a town no one would ever have pegged as the birthplace of a revolution.
Remember that the next time someone says, "It can't be done."
-Seth Godin's The Big Moo
Certainly that's the kind of scenario that was envisioned by all of the world's so-called experts on Eastern Europe. When it came to predicting the life span of the Soviet Bloc, the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon did not think in terms of months or even years. They thought in terms of decades.
But what actually happened? In September 1989, a small group of dissidents in Leipzig, East Germany, held a protest rally and-for reasons no one quite understands-the local police did not sut it down. The next day, in the next town over, another group of dissidents held a protest of their own, and it was a little bigger this time beause they were emboldened by what happened in Leipzig.
The police in that town didn't stop the protesters because, after seeing what happened in Leipzig, they thought that maybe they weren't supposed to do anything. The day after that, there was still another protest in the next town over-a little bit bigger than the last, the police a little more passive-and on and on. All through East Germany, the protests got bigger and bigger and the police grew more and more passive until a million people gathered in the streets of East Berlin in October 1989 and tore down the Berlin Wall as the police sat and watched.
This was the biggest change any of us will probably ever see in our lifetime. It took a month, it cost nothing, and it started with a handful of people in a town no one would ever have pegged as the birthplace of a revolution.
Remember that the next time someone says, "It can't be done."
-Seth Godin's The Big Moo
